III
The problem of dissent, however, goes deeper than the realm of opinion. Dissenting opinion would not trouble Israel so long as it remained pure opinion. The difficulty begins when opinion is translated into action. William James said that a belief always discharges itself in an act; and this supplies us with a convenient working distinction between a belief and an opinion. But this brings us into a region where other forces begin to operate, and particularly that inner constraint to act in obedience to one’s belief which we call conscience. From the days when Plato spoke of his [Greek: daimôn] to ours, the dissenter has always claimed that he acted because he “could do no other.” He submitted to what he believed to be the instance of a moral order from which he could not appeal. His contemporaries either derided his conscience or charged him with hypocrisy; but it is worth some consideration that the contemporary judgment was reversed in almost every case.
It is essential that we should attempt to work out the problem of the relation of conscience to the achievement of liberty in view of the extreme danger which lurks in the recent contemptuous criticism of the conscientious objector. “The duty of obeying conscience at all hazards” (to quote Newman), is valid only so long as we agree with Newman that conscience is “the aboriginal vicar of Christ,” that is to say, that it is the inner embodiment of an irrevocable and infrangible moral order. This does not, of course, imply that every “conscientious objector” interprets the moral order rightly, but simply that it is, as and in so far as he sees it, the moral order for him. His judgment may be fallacious; but what is in question is not so much the soundness of his judgment as the sincerity of his conviction; and we are rather apt to forget that moral sincerity is a greater asset to society than a logical correctitude. It is difficult to see how any one who takes a “religious” view of the world can escape this conviction. Even Lord Morley, who speaks of “the higher expediencies” where a religious believer might speak of an ultimate moral order, reaches the judgment that this is a region in which no man ought to compromise. It is on this account singular that the most drastic criticism of the conscientious objector, both in England and America, has come from ministers of religion; and it is more singular still that this severity of criticism should have chiefly come from ministers of the non-authoritarian churches which were born out of the struggle for the rights of conscience.
When Gladstone challenged English Catholics to say how they would act in the event of a collision between the commands of the Queen and the Pope, the greatest of modern English Catholics took up the gage and gave answer. “It is my rule,” said Newman, “both to obey the one and to obey the other; but that there is no rule in this world without exceptions; and that if either the Pope or the Queen demanded of me an ‘Absolute Obedience,’ he or she would be transgressing the laws of human nature and human society. I give an absolute obedience to neither. Further, if ever this double allegiance pulled me in contrary ways which in this age of the world I think it never will, then I should decide according to the particular case, which is beyond all rule and must be decided on its own merits. I should look to see what theologians could do for me, what the Bishops and Clergy around me, what my confessor, what my friends whom I revered, and if, after all, I could not take their view of the matter, then I must rule myself by my own judgment and my own conscience.”[[24]] He then goes on to insist upon “the duty of obeying our conscience at all hazards” and supports his view by an appeal to weighty Roman authorities. “Certainly,” he concluded, “if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”[[25]]
[24]. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 69. (New York, 1875.)
[25]. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 86. For a luminous discussion of this episode see H. J. Laski, Studies in the Problems of Sovereignty, pp. 121f.
Forty years before this English controversy, a great French Catholic found himself in this dilemma. No man had more consistently maintained the duty of submission to the Pope than Lamennais. His hard fight for religious liberty in France was precisely for the right of the Catholic to render the Pope a full and undivided allegiance in all matters relating to the content and practice of faith. But a time came when the Pope came to exact from Lamennais a submission he was unable to make. As he would not allow the state to have jurisdiction in the spiritual sphere, so he denied to the Pope jurisdiction in the civil. The Pope would not consent to this modification of his claim to authority and demanded of Lamennais an unqualified submission. Whereupon Lamennais replied, “Most Holy Father, a word from your Holiness is always enough for me, not only to obey it in all that religion ordains but to comply with it in all that conscience allows.”[[26]] “Outside the Church,” he wrote to the Countess de Senfft, “in the strictly temporal order, and more particularly in that which touches the affairs of my country, I do not recognise any authority which has the right to impose an opinion upon me or to dictate my conduct. I say it emphatically, in that sphere which is not that of the spiritual power, I will never renounce my independence as a man; nor will I, for thought or action, ever take counsel but of my conscience and my reason.”[[27]] In this course, Lamennais followed the judgment of Cardinal Jacobatus, in what Newman calls his “authoritative work upon councils.” “If it were doubtful whether a precept (of the Pope) be a sin or not, we must determine thus: that if he to whom the precept is addressed has a conscientious sense that it is a sin and injustice; first, it is his duty to put off that sense; but if he cannot nor conform himself to the judgment of the Pope, in that case it is his duty to follow his own private conscience, and patiently to bear it if the Pope punishes him.”[[28]]
[26]. Boutard, Lamennais, sa via et ses doctrines II., p. 382.
[27]. Ibid, II., p. 370.
[28]. Quoted in Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 85. Nevertheless, when Lamennais followed the instances of his conscience, Pope Gregory XVI. in the Bull Mirari vos took occasion to describe “liberty of conscience” as “cette maxime absurde et erronée,” “cette pernicieuse erreur,” “cette liberté funeste.”
At first sight there appears to be no real analogy between the case of the conscientious objector to war, as we have recently known him, and that propounded by Newman. Newman postulates a conflict of loyalties to two societies whose requirements are at a given point antagonistic, before invoking the arbitrament of conscience. The conscientious objector is conceived as setting his own private judgment against the will of the only society to which he owes allegiance. That is, at least, how it looks on the surface. But in point of fact, the conscientious objector as a rule bases his action on the ground of loyalty to a certain view of human relationships, that is to say, to a social ideal; and in the case of a man like Stephen Hobhouse whose social idealism has been validated by a unique realism of self-renunciation and sacrifice, it would be idle to deny that the conflict of loyalties was very concrete and authentic. The Socialist conscientious objector who sees in the International, if not the city of God, at least its threshold, and who does not conceive himself absolved from his loyalty to it even though the German socialists betrayed it, is moved by no personal eccentricity, but by a real social emotion. A sympathetic study of the conscientious objector brings him according to his measure into the same category as the historical leaders of dissenting movements. The decisive moral surrenders which quicken and ennoble life are acts of obedience to a social vision; and the only really moral attitude to men who make these surrenders, however variously they may make them, is that of the dedication of a recent volume—“To all who are fighting for conscience’ sake, whether in the trenches or in prison.”[[29]] It is well for the community that it should have those within it who are ready to endure obloquy and imprisonment rather than be guilty of what is to them a moral apostasy.
[29]. Dr. Orchard’s fine The Outlook for Religion.
The conscientious objector—whatever the subject matter of his dissent—has always been an exasperating figure to his orthodox contemporaries. This is, of course, largely due to the inertia and the dislike of dissent which settle upon middle-aged communities; but at the present time it is probable that the impatience with the conscientious objector springs from other and more respectable sources. Yet by a curious paradox the two principal sources are logically antithetical.
The first is the circumstance that the mental habit of this generation has been profoundly affected by the supremacy of the machine. Its characteristic intellectual achievement is the pragmatist philosophy; and as much in religion and sociology as in the physical sciences its main pre-occupation is with processes. It requires efficiency for immediate concrete objects rather more than faithfulness to what seems to be remote and imponderable abstractions. Conscientious objection is irritating because it is so palpably futile, and indeed so vexatiously obstructive of the business in hand. Not only does it not work, it actually hinders the work in which the multitude is engaged. It puts the machine out of gear; in a supreme emergency when all hands should be at the pumps, the conscientious objector puts us to the trouble of putting him in irons. That is obviously—and naturally—how the case looks. The gulf between the conscientious objector and common opinion is made by a difference of emphasis upon principle and process. The conscientious objector—being perhaps a sort of reversion to a less sophisticated age—puts the process to the test of principle and finds them incompatible. Common opinion, in the exercise of a presumably more realistic judgment says, “This is the only process available; let us make the best use of it we can, and take the risk of coming to terms with principles afterwards, if that be necessary.” The one hitches his wagon to a star; the other hitches it to anything that is going his way. Upon the merits of this kind of controversy, contemporary judgments are notoriously unsafe; unfortunately, none of us will be living at the time when it will be possible to say with assurance who was in this case the true realist after all. Meantime, the conscientious objector, however despised, may help us to a healthier balance between ultimate principle and immediate process than any of us have had this many a day.
But along with the mechanistic habit of thought, there is a survival of the Hegelian idealism which has been chiefly responsible for the modern apothesis of the national state. It is not the Prussian only who has affirmed the sovereignty and omnicompetency of the state and its right to undivided obedience; but being more mechanically and remorselessly logical than his neighbours, he has carried the doctrine to a more definite point. But it seems to be generally assumed in all popular political thinking that our loyalty to the state should be not only first but absolute over all the other loyalties of life. In our day this view has received, particularly in democratic communities, a subtle and plausible reinforcement from the growing emphasis upon the fact of social solidarity with its implication that the consensus of the community fixes the norm of conduct. A man’s conscience should reflect the collective conscience of the society. Moreover, the egalitarian populates of republican democracy are construed to require a uniformity of conduct no less complete than that demanded by the political theory of autocracy; and the unpardonable sin is to break the ranks. “The true democratic principle,” says Lord Acton, “that every man’s free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing.”[[30]] Democracy which has sloughed the archaism of aristocracy has yet to outgrow the Austinian doctrine of sovereignty if it is not to be in danger of ceasing to be the sanctuary and becoming the grave of liberty, and with liberty of much else beside. When it no longer tolerates the nonconformist and the moral pioneer, “its doom is writ;” for once more let it be repeated that historically dissent of this type has always proved to be the growing point of society.
[30]. Lord Acton, The History of Liberty.
This is not a plea for the conscientious objector but for democracy. Newman said that if the Pope spoke against conscience, “he would commit a suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground from under his feet.” The authority of the Pope is not shaken because he concedes to conscience the liberty of dissent; rather it is confirmed. Even more so do the stability and growth of democracy depend upon its recognition of the inviolability of the individual conscience; for democracy cannot live except its roots be deep struck in the moral nature of man. The ultimate battleground of democracy is in men’s hearts; and its appeal must at last ever be to men’s consciences. But the appeal to conscience has no meaning unless conscience be free; and when democracy constrains men’s consciences it is writing off its own spiritual charter. Even in time of war it is safer for democracy to let a hundred shirkers go scot-free rather than run the risk of penalising an honest conscience. For by its affirmation of the sovereignty of conscience it reinforces the consciences of all its members and wins the deeper loyalty of those who are constrained to dissent from its policy on particular issues.